QUESTION: Who wrote, …”these are times that try men’s souls...” ?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: J.R.R. Tolkien’s series of books about Middle Earth are called The Lord of the Rings. What other great work of fiction that encompasses several shows, is also known simply as The Ring?
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History for 11/29/2010
Birthdays: Gaetano Donizetti, Busby Berkeley, C.S. Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, Chuck Mangione, Vin Scully, Gary Shandling, Cathy Moriarity, Don Cheadle, Joel Coen, Jacques Chirac, Kim Delaney, Howie Mandell, Susee “Chapstick” Chafee


1864- Colorado militia killed over 150 Cheyenne Indians in the Sand Creek Massacre. Col. John Chivington was depressed that he was not back east winning glory in the Civil War. So he attacked a peaceful Cheyenne village. He later held a victory parade in Denver displaying the scalps of the Indians, mostly women, old men and children. Chivington eventually resigned from the military. His actions sparked a needless Indian war that raged for years afterwards.

1887- The US Navy received permission from the Hawaiian King David Kalakaou to lease land for a base at Pearl Harbor.

1890- The first Army-Navy football game held at West Point. Midshipmen beat the cadets 24-0.

1915- In the first years of animated films, one artist like Winsor McCay drew everything. This day John Randolph Bray's "Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa" cartoon debuted. Bray adapted Henry Ford's assembly line system to making animation, creating positions of layout, background painters, inkers, cel painters, checkers and camera. After 1919 Bray shifted his studio’s focus from entertainment to technical and training films. Paul Terry, Walter Lantz, Max & Dave Fleischer and Shamus Culhane all got their start at Bray's.

1929- Commander Richard Byrd radioed he'd made the first airplane flight over the South Pole. Commander Byrd had flown over the North Pole in 1926 with his friend Floyd Bennett but Bennett had since died and when Byrd made it over the South Pole he dropped a small American flag weighted with a stone from Bennett’s grave.

1942- U.S. declared coffee would be rationed along with sugar, gasoline and rubber. And lots more. People put their cars up on blocks "for the duration". Gas Ration cards were listed as C, B & A. The C card meant essential defense worker, police & fire, so they had unlimited access to gasoline. A cards were the least important.

1944- A Detroit man named Malcolm Little was busted for larceny. He later reformed his life around the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Malcolm X.

1947- THE UN DECIDES. Since 1897 European Jewry had focused on buying land and relocating to Palestine. In 1936 the Egyptian Parliament issued an open letter to all Jews to come live amongst them, but rising Arab nationalism since 1919 tended to resist Jewish immigration. Since World War One the British held Palestine as a mandate but after World War Two they dumped the whole problem in the United Nations hands. The Peel Report, a Foreign Office paper published in 1937 said maybe creating two new states was the solution.

This day The United Nations voted 33-13 to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Arab independent states with Jerusalem under international supervision. Jews in Palestine danced until dawn while the Arab world rejected the plan and called for the destruction of all Jewish settlements.

On May 14th 1948 British forces completed their withdrawal and Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel.

1959-The Second Grammy Awards, broadcast for the first time on television. Bobby Darins’ rendition of Mack the Knife won top honors.

1961- NASA sent Enos the Chimp into orbit and returned him safely.

1963-THE WARREN COMMISSION announced- President Lyndon Johnson set up the Warren Commission to investigate the murder of John F. Kennedy. He had originally thought the Dallas Homicide Squad was sufficient, but public outrage demanded more.
The Commission was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren and participants included future president Gerald Ford, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State Alan Foster Dulles and future Senator Arlen Spector, who as a young attorney argued for the validity of the "magic bullet" theory”. That one bullet went through Kennedy, bounced, went through Gov. Connolly, ricocheted, went through Connolly a second time, zinged, and wound up sitting in Gov. Connolly's bedsheets in the hospital with no surface dents or marks on it -or something like that.
After ten months the Warren Commission concluded that President Kennedy was killed by a lone nut and there was no conspiracy. In 1975 the House Committee on Assassinations concluded to the contrary that Kennedy probably was the victim of a conspiracy but what it was is unknown. in the end the Warren Commission’s unsatisfying conclusions spawned a generation of conspiracy buffs.

1963- After the Kennedy assassination, comic Vaughn Meader announced he was giving up his act impersonating the dead president. Meader’s comedy album The First Family sold 7.5 million copies in 1962, but now it wasn’t funny anymore and Meaders career collapsed.

2001- former Beatle guitarist and composer George Harrison died of cancer.
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Question: Tolkien’s series of books about Middle Earth are called The Lord of the Rings. What other great work of fiction that encompasses several shows, is also known simply as The Ring?

Answer: Richard Wagner’s four operas the Ring of the Nibelungen- Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung are called The Ring Cycle.